Ars Subtilior in Organ Playing C 1380 14

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Inhalt
Jörg Bölling und Ulrike Wick-Alda

Oratorium und Papstkapelle.
Zur musikalischen Mystik im posttridentinischen Rom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Irene Holzer
„Das ist wol singen in gaÿstlicher fröd“.
Musik der theologia mystica im Kloster Tegernsee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Daniel Tiemeyer
Zwischen Innerlichkeit und Spectacle.
Die Inszenierung mystischer Erfahrung auf der Opernbühne des
19. Jahrhunderts. Klangphänomenologische und dramaturgische
Untersuchungen an Giacomo Meyerbeers Le Prophète . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Philip Feldhordt
Improvisatorisches und Mystisches in Charles Tournemires Orgue
mystique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Kristin Hoefener
Kultgeschichte als Musikgeschichte.
Offizienzyklen zu Ehren der heiligen Ursula und der elftausend Kölner
Jungfrauen unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Laudeszyklus In
choro sanctorum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Franz Lederer
Soli, Da-capo-Anweisungen und Fugen in Gebrauchsmessen des
18. Jahrhunderts.
Untersuchungen zu zeittypischen Verfahrensweisen süddeutscher
Kirchenkomponisten . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
David Catalunya
Ars subtilior in Organ Playing c.1380–1420.
Another Glimpse into a Late Medieval Unwritten Performance Practice . . . . 113
Die Autorinnen und Autoren der Beiträge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145

Ars subtilior in Organ Playing c.1380–1420
Another Glimpse into a Late Medieval Unwritten Performance Practice
David Catalunya
We have long known that the organ was a key element in the solemnization of
late medieval liturgy. Evidence for the existence of church organs and professional
organists in the fourteenth century is omnipresent throughout Europe. 1 Church
customaries, ordinals, and references in different kinds of historical documents
give us a rough sense of the liturgical uses of the organ, namely the chant-or-
gan alternatim practice at Mass and Vespers and the performance of keyboard
arrangements of vocal compositions such as motets and secular songs. In contrast
to contemporaneous repertories of vocal polyphony, however, surviving sources of
keyboard music are extremely rare. 2 This lack of sources is primarily due to the
* This essay was written at the University of Oxford in the context of the ERC project „Music and Late
Medieval European Court Cultures“ (malmecc.eu). The project received funding from the European
Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme
(grant no. 669190).
Manuscript abbreviations and sigla for archives, libraries and modern editions:
Apt 16bis: Apt, Cathédrale Ste Anne, Trésor 16bis
Chantilly: Chantilly, Musée Condé, MS 564
Cividale 79: Cividale del Friuli, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Cod. 79
Faenza 117: Faenza, Biblioteca Comunale, MS 117
Ivrea 115: Ivrea, Biblioteca Capitolare, MS CXV
Madrid 1361: Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España, M1361
Madrid 20486: Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España, MS 20486
Mallorca: Palma de Mallorca, Arxiu de la Catedral, Cantoral del Convent de la Concepció
Mod A: Modena, Biblioteca Estense, MS α.M.5.24
Reina: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, nouv. acq. fr. 6771 (Codex Reina)
Robertsbridge: London, British Library, Add. 28550 (Robertsbridge fragment)
Torino J.II.9: Torino, Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria, MS J.II.9
ACT: Archivo Catedral de Toledo
BCT: Biblioteca Catedral de Toledo
OF: Libro de Obra y Fábrica (Archivo Catedral de Toledo)
CMM: Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae (American Institute of Musicology)
PMFC: Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century (Monaco: Editions de l’Oiseau-lyre)
1 References to organs and organists in fourteenth-century European institutions, both religious and
secular, are literally uncountable. For a capsulized overview, see Peter Williams, A New History of
the Organ (London and Boston: Indiana University Press, 1980): 46–51, where he summarizes how
„organs were known in cathedrals less as an exception and more as a norm.“
2 Only seven sources are currently known to represent fourteenth-century keyboard traditions, most
of them being fragmentary manuscripts or transmitting isolated pieces. These sources are edited
and / or discussed in Keyboard Music of the Late Middle Ages in Codex Faenza 117, ed. Dragan Pla-
menac (CMM 57, Rome: American Institute of Musicology, 1972); Pedro Memelsdorff, The Codex
Faenza 117, 2 vols. (Lucca: LIM, 2013); Giulio Cattin, „Ricerche sulla musica a S. Giustina di Padova
all’inizio del Quattrocento,“ Annales Musicologiques 7 (1977): 17–41; Agostino Ziino, „Un antico

114 David Catalunya
essentially unwritten nature of instrumental performance practice in this period,

which makes it difficult – if not impossible – to reconstruct the richness and
diversity of fourteenth-century organ culture. The few surviving manuscripts of
keyboard music from this period show a considerable variety of notations, con-
trapuntal textures and ornamental styles, 3 which obviously implies that other
organ ‚schools‘ and even ‚personal styles‘ existed in many other places where
no written trace has been preserved at all. Occasionally, contemporaneous trea-
tises on flourished counterpoint and written samples of discant practice afford
a glimpse not only of singers’ but also of organists’ skills in improvised counter-
point. 4
This essay examines a very exceptional written record of a performance practice
cultivated in Toledo Cathedral, in which melodic and contrapuntal ornamenta-
tion on monophonic chant were extemporized. The manuscript, now preserved in
Madrid, transmits a monophonic mensural Credo, whose Amen was provided with
a flourished counterpoint in Ars subtilior style likely to be performed on the organ. 5
In order to provide a meaningful context for this source, I shall first introduce the
background of Toledo Cathedral and explore the role of organs and organists in
both liturgy and music teaching. In subsequent sections, I will analyse the piece’s
notational features and scribal process and, finally, discuss the significance of
this witness within a broader context of relations between unwritten performance
practice and the development of complex rhythmic notation in the late fourteenth
century. The overall discussion sheds new light on the interactions between eccle-
‚Kyrie‘ a due voci per strumento a tastiera,“ Nuova rivista musicale italiana 15/4 (1981): 628–633;
Michael Scott Cuthbert, Trecento Fragments and Polyphony Beyond the Codex (PhD diss., Harvard
University, 2006): 408–409 and elsewhere; Maria van Daalen and Frank Ll. Harrison, „Two Key-
board Intabulations of the Late Fourteenth Century,“ Tijdschrift van de Vereniging voor Nederlandse
Muziekgeschiedenis 34/2 (1984): 97–108; Thurston Dart, „A New Source of Early English Organ
Music,“ Music & Letters 35/3 (1954): 201–204; Keyboard Music of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Cen-
turies, ed. Willi Apel (Stuttgart: American Institute of Musicology, 1963).
3 Compare, for example, the ornamental styles transmitted in English and Italian keyboard sources –
no French keyboard manuscript from the fourteenth century has been preserved.
4 For a list of treatises Anne Stone, „Glimpses of the Unwritten Tradition in Some Ars subtilior
Works,“ Musica Disciplina 50 (1996): 59–93. See also Klaus-Jürgen Sachs, Der Contrapunctus im 14.
und 15. Jahrhundert (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1974).
5 The term Ars subtilior was introduced into musicology by Ursula Günther to refer to the mu-
sical style that emerged in the late fourteenth century and which is characterized by a rhythmic
complexity that goes far beyond the possibilities offered by the classical Ars nova theory. Ursula
Günther, „Das Ende der Ars nova,“ Die Musikforschung 16 (1963): 105–120; idem, „Die Ars subtilior,“
Hamburger Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft 11 (1991): 277–288. For more recent studies on the Ars
subtilior phenomenon, see Anne Stone, Writing Rhythm in Late Medieval Italy: Notation and Musical
Style in the Manuscript Modena, Biblioteca Estense, Alpha.M.5.24 (PhD diss., Harvard University,
1994); Jason Stoessel, The Captive Scribe: The Context and Culture of Scribal and Notational Process in
the Music of the Ars subtilior, 2 vols. (PhD diss., University of New England, 2002); Yolanda Plumley,
„An ‚Episode in the South‘? Ars subtilior and Patronage of French Princes,“ Early Music History 22
(2003): 103–168; Uri Smilansky, Rethinking Ars subtilior: Context, Language, Study and Performance
(PhD, University of Exeter, 2010).

Ars subtilior in Organ Playing c.1380–1420 115
siastical and courtly musical cultures in the formation and dissemination of the Ars
subtilior style.
Organists and music teachers at Toledo Cathedral
The history of Toledo Cathedral begins in 1085 with the conquest of Muslim
Toledo by the Christian king Alfonso VI of León and Castile. Very soon after the cap-
ture of the city, the necessary adaptations were made in order to enable Christian
worship in its principal mosque, and Pope Urban II granted it the status of „Primate
See“ over all the other episcopal sees in Hispania. In other words: Toledo became
Spain’s ecclesiastical capital, at least symbolically. The Christianised mosque re-
mained nearly intact through the first quarter of the thirteenth century; the current
Gothic structure began to be built in 1226. 6 For centuries to come, the Metropolitan
Archdiocese of Toledo enjoyed international reputation as the second richest after
that of Rome. 7
References to masters of polyphony and organ players at Toledo Cathedral be-
gin to appear in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Administrative records and
obituaries from that period mention the names of at least four persons holding
the title of „organista“ or „magister organista.“ 8 Although we cannot be sure what
the exact functions of these organistae were, we might suppose that they took on
duties similar to those of the magister or doctor in organo of Burgos Cathedral,
first documented in 1222. By 1250 the cathedral chapter of Burgos had established a
twofold salary that paid the doctor in organo not only for his teaching duties but also
for his service of playing the organ during the most solemn liturgical celebrations
(„ad pulsanda organa consuetis solemnitatibus“). 9
Payments to organists at Toledo Cathedral are more clearly documented in
books of accounts from the fourteenth century onwards, particularly in the series
entitled Libros de Obra y Fábrica (hereinafter OF). 10 Thus we know the names of six
organists who served at Toledo Cathedral between c.1350 and 1425:
6 For an overview of Toledo Cathedral in the central and late Middle Ages, see Tom Nickson, Toledo
Cathedral: Building Histories in Medieval Castile (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015).
7 For an introduction to the cathedral’s organizational and liturgical aspects, see María José Lop Otín,
La Catedral de Toledo en la Edad Media (Toledo: ITSI, 2008).
8 David Catalunya, „Thirteenth-century organistae in Castile,“ Orgelpark Research Reports 4 (2017):
105–140 (Open Access at orgelpark.nl).
9 Ibid., pp. 112–113.
10 The Obra y Fábrica was a department of the cathedral chapter directly responsible for anything
relating to the construction of the building, its preservation, and its ornamentation.

116 David Catalunya
– Pedro González (between 1354 and 1411) 11

– Ruy González (1355) 12
– Alfonso Fernández (1384) 13
– García Esteban (1384) 14
– Miguel Sánchez (between 1418 and 1432) 15
– Juan Alonso de Ronda (between 1425 and 1427) 16
All of them had further occupations besides playing the organ, namely those of
chaplain and magister claustralis. The magister claustralis (or claustrero, in the
vernacular Castilian) was the music teacher of the choirboys and other cathedral
clerics. Pedro González (fl.1354–1411) was indeed a magister claustralis who was
paid a supplementary salary for playing the organ. Alfonso Fernández was also paid
for playing the organ in 1384, and the same name appears in 1418 as a cantor „who
had the job of teaching mensural polyphony to the choirboys.“ 17
Like in thirteenth-century Burgos, the double function of the magister claus-
tralis as a music teacher and an organist was rendered official in the cathedral
Constitutiones of Toledo. Those promulgated in 1357 by Archbishop Blas Fernández
of Toledo stipulate that: 18
Ad officium magistri claustralis pertinet docere et instruere pueros seu clericellos chori, et alios
beneficiatos ecclesie in cantu et vsu ecclesie diligenter, et eorum defectus seu errores circa offi-
cium etiam choro corrigere et emendare . . . Item, ad ipsum claustralem pertinet, si ad id eruditus
sufficiens existat, pulsatio organorum, et pro onere pulsationis huiusmodi, centum de refectorio
et tecentos sexaginta et quinque de fabrica ecclesie morapetinos . . . et pro onere claustri decem
denarios diebus singulis percipiat, prout in constitutione de portione quotidiana habetur. 19
(The task of the magister claustralis is to teach and instruct diligently the children or choirboys
and other church beneficiaries in singing and the customs of the church, and to correct and
11 See François Reynaud, La polyphonie tolédane et son milieu, des premiers témoignages aux environs
de 1600 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996) 154–165. Payments „por los órganos“ in 1354 (OF 927, ff. 35, 42, 51),
1355 (OF 1046, ff. 14 v, 16 r, 21 v, 29 r, 29 v), 1372 (OF 929, f. 49 v), 1379 (OF 930, ff. 65 v, 71 v, 77 r), 1400
(OF 930, f. 67 r) and 1411 (OF 930, f. 98 v).
12 OF 1046, ff. 14 v, 16 r, 21 v, 29 r, 29 v. He and Pedro González were both racioneros (prebendary canons)
of the Dean Choir. See Reynaud, La polyphonie tolédane, p. 154. Barbieri claims to have traced
him as „Ruy González, capellán de la Reina, tocador de los órganos“ in the Libros de pagas del
tercio postrimero of 1355. Francisco Asenjo Barbieri, Biografías y documentos sobre música y músicos
españoles, ed. Emilio Casares (Madrid: Fundación Banco Exterior, 1986): 422.
13 OF 760, f. 22 v. Payment „por los órganos.“
14 Ibid., f. 28 v. Payment „por los órganos.“
15 Documents from 1418 (OF 761, f. 4r: „capellán . . . que ovo de aver de oficio del tañer de los órganos“),
1425 (OF 783, f. 13 v); 1429 (OF 767, f. 11 r), 1431 (OF 768, f. 11 r) and 1432 (OF 769, f. 10 r). Barbieri traced
him in books of accounts from 1424, 1425, 1426, 1427, 1431, 1432, 1436. Barbieri, Biografías, p. 434.
16 Documents from 1425 (OF 783, f. 13 v), 1426 (OF 764, f. 10) and 1427 (OF 765, f. 9).
17 OF 761, f. 4v: „Alfonso Fernández, cantor . . . que ovo de aver su oficio de mostrar a los moços el canto
de órgano.“ Barbieri, Biografías, p. 211. „Canto de órgano“ is the usual term for mensural polyphony
in the vernacular Castilian.
18 The cathedral Constitutiones by Archbishop Blas are preserved in various manuscripts. The earliest
copy is in ACT, MS 23-17. Citations in this article are from ACT, SC, lib. 2. A later copy is preserved
in Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, MS 13021.
19 ACT, SC, lib. 2, f. 25 v [f. xv v], De officio magistri claustralis.

amend their defects or errors concerning their tasks in the choir . . . Likewise, if sufficiently
learned in this matter, the magistrer claustralis is also to play the organ, and for the work of
playing the organ, shall be paid 100 morabetinos by the refectory and 365 by the church fabrica . . .
and for the teaching work, 10 dinars per day, as is stipulated in the constitution on daily payment.)
Because the music teacher was often an organist himself, not surprisingly the organ
was used in musical education and helped materializing the perception of theoret-
ical principles. Organ keyboards were especially useful to illustrate hexachord and
musica ficta theory. Around 1400–1410, a „teacher of plainsong, counterpoint, and
mensural polyphony“ of Seville Cathedral – whose treatise is preserved in Toledo –
instructed his pupils to look at the organ keyboard, where the accidental tones were
visible even „with the usual signs written [above the keys].“ 20 Here the teacher
was obviously referring to the note-names that were customarily written above the
organ keys, as they appear on the surviving remnants of the Norrlanda organ from
c.1370–1400. 21
In Toledo Cathedral, if not the major church organ, smaller instruments like
the Norrlanda organ were used to accompany the chant on a regular basis, and
the Constitutiones of 1357 specify that it was the precentor who was responsible for
ensuring and organizing the operation of the organ’s bellows:
Precentoris officium est, ut diuina officia debito modo in ecclesia fiant, se vigilem exhibere; . . .
clericellorum chori insolentias, et quecunque alia negotia, questiones et lites, que intereosdem
emerserint, prout sibi videbitur, punire et terminare . . . et ad organa pulsanda compellere; et si
clericelli non affuerint, capellani per decanum ad id compellantur. 22
(The task of the precentor is being vigilant so that the divine offices be properly held in the
church; . . . punishing and ending all insolence and any other matter or disagreement arising
among the choirboys . . . and making them [the choirboys] operate [the bellows of] the organ; 23
and if the choirboys are not present, the chaplains must be made to do so by the dean.)
The same cathedral Constitutiones stipulate that the organ was always to be heard
during the celebration of the Mass on the most solemn feast days, even when there
was no procession to be held:
20 Fernand Estevan: Reglas de canto plano è de contrapunto è de canto de organo, ed. María Pilar
Escudero (Madrid: Editorial Alpuerto, 1984; reprint 2002), p. 95 (f. 12 r): „E munchos disen que las
conjuntas non son verdaderas, mas ve a los órganos, que así las fallarás sennaladas estas conjuntas
con los signos deyuso escriptos.“ See also Karl-Werner Gümpel, „Gregorian Chant and Musica
Ficta: New Observations from Spanish Theory of the Early Renaissance,“ Recerca musicològica 6–7
(1986–87): 5–27, at 10–11.
21 The remnants of the Norrlanda organ are currently on display in the National Historical Mu-
seum in Stockholm. See Göran Tegnér, „L’orgue de Norrlanda et quelques autres vestiges d’orgues
médiévaux en Suède,“ in Les orgues gothiques, ed. Marcel Pérès (Paris: Créaphis, 2000): 207–220
(picture of the organ keyboard on p. 211). See also Karl Bormann, Die gotische Orgel zu Halberstadt:
Eine Studie über mittelalterlichen Orgelbau (Berlin: Verlag Merseburger, 1966): 28–37, and Peter
Williams, The Organ in Western Culture, 750–1250 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1993): 343.
22 ACT, SC, lib. 2, f. 22 v [f. xii v], De officio precentoris.
23 Since this task is entrusted to the choirboys, here „organa pulsanda“ should be understood as
operating the bellows of the organ.

118 David Catalunya
De festiuitatibus vero sex caparum, post dictam domini Roderici ordinationem de nouo institutis,
taliter duximus ordinandum: ut in ipsis officium in missa cum sex capis et organorum pulsatione
sollemniter tantummodo celebretur, non tamen ratione festi processio fiat. 24
(On feast days of six copes 25 instituted ex novo by order of [archbishop] don Rodrigo, we decided
the following: on such feast days, only the Office of the Mass with six copes and the playing of the
organ will be held solemnly, even if, because of the feast day, no procession needs be held.)
In solemn processions, rather than accompanying or alternating with chant, the

large organ was played simultaneously with the ringing of all church bells, which
gives us an idea of its massive volume of sound. An ordinance from c.1400 em-
phasises that major feast days should be celebrated with the greatest possible
solemnity. 26 In describing how the processions must be carried out in those solemn
celebrations, the ordinance specifies that „a cluster with all the bells be made and
the organ be played“ after the prayer at the third station of the procession. 27
Although the city of Toledo had long been home to reputed organ builders, 28
and evidence suggests that Toledo Cathedral had owned large church organs since
early times, 29 the earliest known record of any organ-building activity at the cathe-
dral dates from 1418. By then, the organ-builder Fray Giraldo was working on the
24 ACT, SC, lib. 2, f. 16 v [f. vi v].

25 „Six copes“ refers to the number of presiding canons who wore pluvial copes at Mass.
26 BCT, 42–31, ff. 1 r–3v: „deseando e queriendo acresçentar el seruiçio de Dios e dela dicha eglesia, et
por que es cosa razonable que en quanto la fiesta es mayor e más ornada, tanto más le deuen ser
fecha mayor sollenpnidat e más onrada.“
27 Ibid., f. 2v: „que sea fecho clauso con todas las campanas et que tangan los órganos.“ The source
provides a list of new feast days on which the organ was to sound in processions, among which
are: „Translatio Sancti Benedicti, ordenóla el cabildo que la fagan de seys capas con processión et
órganos“ (f. 5 v); „Sant Antolín ordenólo don Gutier Gómez, abbat de fusiellos, que lo fagan de .vi.
capas con processión et órganos“ (f. 71 r); „Santa Odolia, ordenóla don Iohannes Cabeça de Vaca,
obispo de Coymbra, de .vi. capas con processión et órganos“ (f. 71 r); „Sant Lucas que ordenó el
cabildo que lo feziesen de .vi. capas con processión et órganos“ (f. 78 r); „la batalla del salado quando
el rey don Alfonso venció al rey de Benamarín en .xxx. días de octubre, que fue lunes, era de mill
et .ccc.os et .lxx. et ocho annos [i.e. 1240] . . . Esta dicha fiesta se ordenó que se reze et cante de su
lectura perpetua, et á se de fascer processión solepne con órganos“ (f. 78 r).
28 An organ builder from Toledo, „Martinus Ferrandiç, civis Tholetane, magister organorum,“ was
engaged in 1345 to build a big organ at Barcelona Cathedral. Josep Baucells, „Les notícies més
antigues sobre els orgues de la Catedral de Barcelona,“ Medievalia 8 (1988): 41–74, at 70–71.
29 In addition to the evidence presented above, the cathedral Constitutiones from 1374 by Archbishop
Gómez Manrique mention the „door“ that gave access the organ, close to which a procession had
to pass: „permaiorem processionem, iuxta ianuam organorum vbi statim erit caput prime stationis“
(BCT, MS 23-17, f. 36 r, modern foliation). Although we cannot be certain of the date on which large
organs began to be installed in Toledo, we do know that by 1284 the Salamanca Cathedral had a
large organ accessible by stairs through a door. An obituary from Salamanca Cathedral records that
Fernán Núñez (a canon who died in 1284) „yace a la puerta por donde solían sobir a los órganos“
(note that the document employs the past tense to refer to the use of this door). According to the
same obituary, Juan Pérez, a racionero of Salamanca Cathedral, also entered near the door that
had given access to the big organ („la puerta por donde solían estar los órganos grandes“). Archivo
de la Catedral de Salamanca, Caj. 67, Capitulario de la Catedral de Salamanca, Memorias de los
Aniversarios y Fiestas que hace el Cabildo, ff. ix r and xii v respectively.

construction of a new church organ. 30 Here the term „órganos mayores“ obviously
implies that the cathedral owned other, smaller, organs to accompany the chant in
the choir and in other chapels, and slightly later documents do, in fact, mention the
„órganos menores.“ 31 We also know that other portative organs were even carried
in processions outside the cathedral. 32
Fray Giraldo’s organ was wind-powered by eight bellows and had two keyboards
starting with C. 33 Giraldo, however, died sometime before September 1424 without
having concluded the construction work, although the organ’s principal stop seems
already to have been playable by then. In September 1424 the cathedral chapter
made a new contract with the successor of Fray Giraldo, Juan Rodrígez de Córdoba;
of particular interest is the contract’s request for a re-working of the organ’s two
keyboards:
Otrosy, que los dos juegos, como están fechos, que se pongan en manera que el vn juego non
enbargue al otro quando se tañieren, e que sean bien blandos para tañer, et que faga otros juegos
más largos que los que estauan fechos e auia fecho frey Giraldo por quanto non eran muy ligeros
nin tan bien labrados. 34
(Likewise, that the two keyboards, as they are built, be placed in such way that one keyboard does
not activate the other when they are played, and that they be soft to the touch; and that he make
other keyboards [with] longer [keys] than the ones Fray Giraldo had made, which were not very
soft and so well-made.)
If organ performance at Toledo Cathedral had reached a level of virtuosity com-

parable to that of the repertoire transmitted in Faenza 117 or the Robertsbridge
fragment, this would certainly have justified the need to lengthen and lighten the
organ’s keys. Yet, as in the case of the vast majority of European cathedrals in
this period, we know almost nothing specific about the organist’s actual skills and
playing styles. Only a short musical passage notated in a liturgical codex appears to
shed some light on the organist’s savoire-faire at Toledo Cathedral.
30 OF 761 (July 4, 1418) payment of 1000 maravedís to Frary Giraldo, due to him for his work on the
organ („que tiene de auer del adobo que fizo delos órganos“). A copy of this OF book is preserved
in Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, MS 14033.74. Cited in Robert Stevenson, Spanish Music in the Age of
Columbus (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960): 120.
31 OF 762 (1424), f. 28: „mantenimiento del maestro de los órganos menores, que los afinó e los asentó.“
32 Fray Pedro purchased two organs for the Corpus Christi procession in 1429 (OF 767, f. 44 v).
33 In 1428, Frey Pedro „the watchmaker“ (relojero) made certain repairs on the eight bellows and was
also required to soften the two keyboards again. Barbieri, Biografías, p. 369.
34 OF 762, f. 219 r, September 1424, Órganos mayores de la eglesia de Toledo; in the margin: „órganos que
se afinaron e asentaron, los quales fizo Fray Giraldo, e porque murió el dicho Fra Giraldo, ovieron
los de afinar e asentar en lo contenido.“ Other passages contain information about the keyboard
compass the chorus composition: „Primeramente, que desde el primero punto que será çefaut fasta
el punto de alamire, que son seys puntos, de les debaxo que fuesen e sean çenzillas de vn prinçipal
solo et sus conjuntas, e dende adelante, que sean dobladas segund que se requiere a la obra . . .
Otrosy, la ordenaçión de los caños de dentro, que tengan sus quintos e que ponga toda la otra
melodía segunt quél sabe qués menester e esté fecha e ordenada.“

120 David Catalunya
Manuscript Madrid 1361 and its Scribe β
We must thus turn our attention to manuscript Madrid 1361, a beautiful gradual
from the late thirteenth-century that was used intensively as a practical source in
Toledo Cathedral through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. 35 The manuscript
contains an endless number of marginal annotations and corrections, and the few
folios that its main scribe left blank were used by various other scribes to notate
additional pieces of monophonic and polyphonic music in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries. Among these additions is the mensural Credo whose Amen, I
suggest, offers a glimpse into the counterpoint skills of a cathedral organist.
Before discussing the Credo’s scribal and musical features in detail, it is worth
taking a quick look at the scribe’s further activity within the codex. Gómez
Muntané, in her 1991 study of the manuscript, referred to the codex’s main scribe as
Scribe A while later scribes were identified with letters of the Greek alphabet. 36 The
mensural Credo in question was notated by Scribe β on f. 178r–v (see Figures 1a–b
and Example 1).
Scribe β notated his Credo (f. 178r–v) next to another mensural Credo previously
copied on f. 177r–v by Scribe α. In order to complete his work, Scribe β had to erase
the work of another secondary hand who had already used f. 178 v; only the lower
half of the page escaped Scribe β’s erasure. This shows Scribe β’s strong interest in
notating his Credo right next to that of Scribe α. Furthermore, Scribe β reworked
Scribe α’s piece by adding some minims to its original, simpler rhythmic texture of
breves and semibreves (see Figure 2 and Example 2).
Scribe β’s contact with ‚simple polyphony‘ is also suggestive. On f. 196 v he copied
Iuste judex, a three-part composition in homophonic style (see Figure 3 and Ex-
ample 3), which is in great contrast with the flourished counterpoint of the Credo’s
Amen. Iuste judex is an unicum in Madrid 1361, although its texture and charac-
teristic third-plus-fifth sonority brings to mind the Ave maris stella transmitted in
Apt 16bis (f. 15 v). 37
35 The Toledo provenance of Madrid 1361 has been firmly established in J. Janini and J. Serrano,
Manuscritos litúrgicos de la Biblioteca Nacional (Madrid: Dirección General de Archivos y Bib-
liotecas, 1969): 284; David Catalunya, „¿Ars subtilior en Toledo? Un indicio en el códice M1361 de
la Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid,“ Anuario Musical 66 (2011): 3–46, at 17–19; Arturo Tello, „Europa
en el camino hacia Toledo: Una presentación de los repertorios de tropos y secuencias toledanos,“
in A musicological gift: Libro homenaje for Jane Morlet Hardie, ed. K. Nelson and M. Gómez Muntané
(Lions Bay: The Institute of Mediaeval Music, 2013): 325–354, at 336–337. The manuscript has also
been described by Anglès, who mistakenly states that it is „monastic“ and „of Catalan origin.“ Higini
Anglès and José Subirà, Catálogo Musical de la Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid, 2 vols. (Barcelona:
CSIC, 1946–51): 99–105. The description in RISM (vol. B IV 2, ed. G. Reaney, 1969, pp. 97–98) is based
on Anglès.
36 Maricarmen Gómez Muntané, „Autour du répertoire du XIVe siècle du manuscrit M1361 de la
Bibliothèque Nationale de Madrid,“ in Aspects de la musique liturgique au Moyen Age. Actes des
Colloques de Royaumont de 1986, 1987 et 1988, ed. Christian Meyer (Paris: Creaphis, 1991): 245–260;
reedited in L’Ars nova italiana del Trecento 6. Atti del Congresso internazionale, Certaldo, 19–21 lulio
1987, ed. Giulio Cattin (Certaldo: Edizioni Polis, 1992): 193–207.
37 See the Apt 16bis Ave maris stella in PMFC 23B, no. 80; Iuste judex is also edited in PMFC 23B, no. 88.

Furthermore, Scribe β reveals himself as a ‚user‘ of the liturgical corpus of the

manuscript. The main copyist of the codex (Scribe A) had left three incomplete
Alleluya on ff. 150 v–151 r and 152 r, of which he copied only the text. A later scribe,
whom I call Scribe m, completed the musical notation of these three Alleluya.
Although Scribe m shares many notational features with Scribe β, the size of his pen
is slightly smaller and his black ink is clearly different from that used by Scribe β,
which has a browner tone. Scribe β’s hand, pen and ink, however, are recognizable
in a minor correction in the text of the Alleluya on f. 151 r. Scribe m took the trouble
to erase a segment of the original text in order to adapt its alignment to the new
music; Scribe β, in turn, added two syllables that Scribe m had forgotten to rewrite
(see Figure 4).
The late additions to Madrid 1361 include the annexation of a bifolio at the end
of the codex, 38 on which a three-part Gloria was copied by a different scribe (Scribe
δ). This Gloria, an unicum in Madrid 1361 attributed to a certain Petrus, 39 is the
longest and most elaborate piece of polyphonic music added into the codex (see Ex-
ample 4). 40 It consists of three sections, each one concluding with an isorhythmic
passage. The piece is in the so-called „chanson style“ or „discant style“ character-
istic of the late fourteenth-century sacred repertory transmitted in sources such as
Apt 16bis.
This Gloria may represent a token of the repertory of complex polyphony that
was circulating at Toledo Cathedral by the late fourteenth century, and with which
Scribe β must surely have been familiar. In fact, the scribe who copied it shares
many calligraphic features with Scribe β in the musical notation. This network
of scribal connections in turn suggests a cohesive group of scribes within Toledo
Cathedral, who belonged to the same ‚school‘. Yet the musical skills of Scribe β are
far beyond those of a mere copyist.
The Credo on f. 178 – arte de melodía
The monophonic mensural Credo that Scribe β copied on f. 178r–v is known

through three other sources: Ivrea 115 (f. 64 v), Cividale 79 (ff. 1v+4 r) and Mallorca
(ff. 54 v–55 v). All three of these concordances share a simple rhythmic texture of
breves and semibreves. 41 The version in Madrid 1361, however, exhibits unique,
extensive ornamented passages that include groups of up to six minims and a
variety of rhythmic figurations for which the scribe resorted to void notation and
red coloration (see Example 1). The ornamented passages relate to entire verses of
38 The size of this bifolio (ff. 189–199) is slightly smaller than the rest of the codex, and the quality
of the parchment is significantly lower – apparently it had not been properly polished to receive
writing. Codicological features strongly suggest that the bifolio did not belong to a larger codex of
polyphonic music.
39 Catalunya, „¿Ars subtilior en Toledo?,“ p. 15.
40 Edited in CMM 29, no. 33 (pp. 54–55), and PMFC 23A, no. 41 (pp. 168–171).
41 The Mallorca version includes some minims in the style of Scribe β’s additions to Scribe α’s Credo.

122 David Catalunya
the Credo, while other verses retain the simple rhythmic texture of the concordant
sources. Plain and ornamented verses are indeed organized according to an alter-
natim structure as shown in Table 1.
Table 1: Alternatim structure of the Credo in Madrid 1361, f. 178r–v
verse style notation

Patrem omnipotentem Simple Black (no minims)
Et in unum dominum Ornamented Black, red, void (with minims)
Et ex patre natum Simple Black (no minims)
Genitum non factum Ornamented Void, red, only 3 black notes at the beginning
(with minims)
Qui propter nos Simple Black (no minims)
Crucifixus Ornamented Void, red (with minims)
Et resurexit Simple Black (no minims)
Et iterum Ornamented Void, red (with minims)
Et in Spiritum Simple Black (no minims)
Qui cum Patre Ornamented Void, red (with minims)
Et unam sanctam Simple Black (no minims)
Confiteor Ornamented Void, red (with minims)
Et expecto Simple Black (no minims)
Amen Polyphonic Tenor: Black (no minims)
Counterpoint: proportional signs ‚3‘ and ‚4‘,
mensural sign C, minims and semiminims
Details in the choice of notational devices and in the alignment of text and music
reveal that Scribe β himself inserted the ornamented passages with a certain degree
of spontaneity. The text is uniformly distributed throughout the piece, from which
it follows that it was copied in full prior to the notation of the music above it. In fact,
the rendering of the entire text is characteristic of quasi-syllabic music and does
not behave differently in simple and ornamented verses. The horizontal spacing
of the musical notation thus became visibly irregular in the ornamented sections;
the lack of space for the ornamental figurations obliged the scribe to compress the
note-bodies drastically (see for example the words „unigenitum“ and „pecatorum“
in Figure 5). Nonetheless, a few words were split in order to accommodate micro-
melismas (see for example the words „se-culo,“ and „ce-lis“ in Figure 5). Yet para-
doxically, most of these words belong to unornamented sections. The only split
word appearing in an ornamented section is „fa-cta“ (at the end of the second
ornamented verse), although precisely the melody on this word (a four-note scale)
remained unornamented. Significantly, the same word is also split in Ivrea 115. The
Toledo scribe obviously provided the spacing necessary for the micro-melismas
he saw on his exemplar, from which he copied the entire text and the music of

the unornamented verses. All of the foregoing strongly suggests that the extensive
melodic ornaments were not present in the exemplar available to Scribe β, other-
wise he would have left the necessary space for such eye-catching passages. 42
While the unornamented verses are notated in black notation and contain no
minims, the ornamented sections are in major prolation and make use of void nota-
tion and red coloration. Scribe β employed three different pens, one for each type of
notation (black, red, void). 43 In this piece, red coloration indicates imperfection –
that is, the division of the breve into three imperfect semibreves instead of two per-
fect semibreves. Void notation, however, has no obvious mensural or proportional
meaning; given the fact that the plain verses do not contain minims, there is no
distinction to be made at that level. Most likely, here void notation is used merely
as a sort of visual marker, perhaps to emphasize the alternatim structure.
Yet the crystal-clear consistency of this notational ‚system‘ is not apparent at
the beginning of the piece, but rather was developed over the first two ornamented
verses until becoming rigorously systematic from the third onwards. The first or-
namented verse (Et in unum dominum) starts with a combination of black and red
notation; towards the end of the verse, the scribe replaces the black notation with
white. The second ornamented section (Genitum non factum) begins with a group of
three black notes followed by another group of red notes, and from this point on fol-
lows a combination of void and red notation. The rest of the ornamented verses are
notated exclusively in void and red notation. Here we see a scribe experimenting
with different notational techniques, trying one and then another, changing his
mind and, throughout the process, deciding which one is the most suitable for his
purpose. Once the system was established, he followed it consistently.
Scribe β’s version of this Credo thus becomes the earliest witness of an elusive,
unwritten performance practice of plainchant embellishment at Toledo Cathedral,
which is referred to in writings from the fifteenth until the nineteenth century
as melodía, canto de melodía, canto melódico, cantus melodicus, or cantus euge-
nianus. 44 The earliest known definition and description of this practice is found
42 There is little doubt that both the text and the music were copied by the same person; both
were written with the same ink, and the other piece copied by the same scribe, Iuste iudex,
shows identical palaeographical features in both music and text, including the rubrics „tenor“ and
„contra[tenor].“
43 The use of two different pens for black and red notation was a common practice in order to
avoid the mixing of inks. The third pen was used for the void notation and is characterized by its
thickness. Because the ink frequently runs into the body of the notes, void notation is at times hard
to distinguish from black notation. The shape and thickness of this pen prompted the scribe to draw
a different form of custos for the passages in void notation. The quick alternation of these three pens
within the same piece – especially at the beginning of the first two ornamented verses – makes it
highly improbable that more than one scribe was involved in copying this Credo. Scribe β used the
same thick pen to add minims to Scribe α’s Credo on f. 177.
44 Its origins, however, remain uncertain. According to Romero de Ávila (1774), the tradition of
canto de melodia, or cantus eugenianus, originated with Eugene II, the Visigothic archbishop of
Toledo (†657), and existed only at Toledo Cathedral, where it was held in the highest esteem.
For an overview of the canto de melodía tradition and its historiography, see Gümplel, „Cauntus

124 David Catalunya
in an early sixteenth-century treatise entitled Arte de melodía sobre canto lano y

canto d’órgano. 45 According to its anonymous author, the art of melodía consists
of „ornamenting and gracing the melodies of plainchant.“ 46 The treatise includes a
description of the „principal note shapes of the plainchant,“ that is, the note shapes
of mensural notation, which, according to the theorist, „were invented in order
to give movement (ayre) to plainchant.“ 47 Similar definitions and descriptions are
found in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century writings, often relating the melodía
practice to the choirboys. In the words of Sebastian de Covarrubias (1611), melodía
„is a certain skill that makes the voice and the chant smooth and sweet, and in
the Holy Church of Toledo there is a particular master who teaches the choirboys
this skill, because not everyone is able to attain it.“ 48 Francisco Marcos y Navas
(1776) defines canto melódico as „a sort of gloss, with which the choirboys of the
Holy Church of Toledo adorn the verses of the [Office of the] Hours and other
things.“ 49 Gerónimo Romero de Ávila (1774), himself a maestro de melodía at Toledo
Cathedral, 50 adds that the melodía embellishments were sung in „alternatim cum
eugenianus;“ idem, „El canto melódico de Toledo: algunas reflexiones sobre su origen y estilo,“
Recerca Musicológica 8 (1988): 25–45; Luciano Serrano, „Historia de la música en Toledo,“ Revista de
archivos, bibliotecas y museos 11 (1907): 219–43; Germán Prado and Casiano Rojo, El canto mozárabe
(Barcelona: Diputación Provincial, 1929).
45 That is, The art of melodía on plainchant and polyphony. The text makes explicit references to
Toledo. The treatise is preserved in Barcelona, Biblioteca de Catalunya, MS 1325, ff. 21 r–24 v. Edited
in Gümpel, „El canto melódico,“ pp. 38–45.
46 f. 22 r, „ornar y agraciar los sones del canto lano“ (Chapter 2).
47 f. 21 r, „fueron inuentadas para dar ayre al canto lano“ (Chapter 1). In the introduction to the treatise,
the anonymous author also suggests a connection between the art of melodía and the performance
of Mozarabic chant: See Gümpel, „El canto melódico,“ pp. 34 and 38. Interestingly, the so-called
‚Mozarabic choirbooks‘ commissioned in 1503 by Cardinal Jiménez de Cisneros for daily use in
the Mozarabic Chapel of Toledo Cathedral are entirely notated in mensural notation. For more
on the Cisneros Choirbooks, see Carmen Julia Gutiérrez, „Los Cantorales mozárabes de Cisneros,“
Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez 49/1 (2019): 185–222 (open access at https://journals.openedition.
org/mcv/9834), and Susan Boynton, Silent Music: Medieval Song and the Construction of History in
Eighteenth-century Spain (New York: University Press, 2011). For a facsimile reproduction of the
four choirbooks, see Los cantorales mozárabes de Cisneros. Catedral de Toledo, 2 vols., ed. Ángel
Fernández Collado et al. (Toledo: Cabildo de la Catedral Primada de Toledo, 2011).
48 Sebastián de Covarrubias, Tesoro de la Lengua Castellana o Española (Madrid, 1611), p. 545: „Melodía
es en música cierto primor que haze la voz y el canto suaue y dulce; y en la santa yglesia de Toledo
ay maestro particular que enseña a los infantes de coro este primor, porque no todos le alcançan.“
Digital reproduction available at http://fondosdigitales.us.es/fondos/libros/765/16/tesoro-de-la-
lengua-castellana-o-espanola/
49 Francisco Marcos y Navas, Arte o compendio general del canto-llano, figurado y órgano (Madrid,
[1776]), p. 5: „Canto Melódico es una cierta glosa, con que los niños de la Santa Iglesia de Toledo
adornan los versículos de las Horas, y otras cosas.“ Gümplel, „Cauntus eugenianus,“ p. 407.
50 Romero de Ávila held the post of maestro de melodía from 1749 until his death in 1779. Gümpel,
„Cauntus eugenianus,“ p. 407, citing F. Rubio Piqueras, Música y Músicos Toledanos (Toledo: Plaez,
1923): 69.

cantu Gregoriano,“ and provides an example of this elusive, unwritten performance

practice (see Example 5). 51
Karl-Werner Gümpel states that the Toledo canto de melodía tradition is doc-
umented only from 1448 to 1851. 52 The earliest evidence he cites is a document
dated 1448, which specifies that the duties of the magister claustralis include the in-
struction of the cathedral clerics and choirboys in „cantu seu musica de melodia.“ 53
Nonetheless, a Libro de Obra y Fábrica from 1425 records payments to the racionero
(prebendary canon) Juan González de Jaén for teaching the choirboys „canto llano
e melodía,“ and the same person is also documented in 1418 as having taught men-
sural polyphony („canto de órgano“). 54 These dates are indeed much closer to the
late additions to Madrid 1361.
The Credo’s Amen – Subtilitas in organ performance?
Scribe β’s version of this Credo represents an exceptional written witness not only
of the elusive canto de melodía practice, but also of the more widespread custom
of extemporizing flourished counterpoints on liturgical melodies. According to the
alternatim pattern shown in Table 1 above, the Amen should have been the last
ornamented section of the Credo. Yet instead of melodic ornamentation, Scribe β
provided the Amen with a polyphonic amplification, which in fact operates as a
concluding climax (see Example 6). The flourished counterpoint lacks text and, given
its rhythmic-melodic texture that apparently leaves no room for breathing, there are
good reasons for assuming that it was intended to be performed instrumentally. 55
51 That is, alternating ornamented and unornamented verses (base chant) within the same piece.
Romero de Avila wrote his treatise Sobre el Canto Gothico, y Eugeniano, vulgo Melodía in 1774 at
the request of Cardinal Francisco Antonio de Lorenzana. The original manuscript is now preserved
in Toledo’s Public Library (MS R.177). A Latin version of the treatise was printed one year later under
the title Cantus Eugeniani seu melodici explanatio in Lorenzana’s Breviarium gothicum (Toledo,
1775): pp. xxvi–xxix. Text reproduced in J. P. Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus, Series latina 86
(Paris: Garnier Frères, 1850): col. 33–36.
52 Gümpel, „Cantus eugenianus,“ p. 407.
53 „ad docendum seu instruendum clericulos vel pueros predicte ecclesie in divinis officiis et pre-
sertim cantu seu musica de melodia.“ Bull granted by pope Nicholas V in 1448 in response to a
complaint from the Toledo dean, who was concerned about the negligence with which claustreros
performed this important task, due to the insufficiency of their remuneration. BCT, MS 42-29
(Libro de Arcayos), ff. 62 r–63 v and 66 v. Lop Otín, El Cabildo, p. 321. Note that Gonzálvez Ruiz („La
escuela de Toledo,“ p. 188) mistakenly cites this reference as the Constitutiones of Archbishop Blas
Fernández of Toledo.
54 OF 761 (1418), f. 4 v. Barbieri, Biografías, p. 240. Reynaud, La polyphonie tolédane, p. 100.
55 The scribe’s meticulous treatment of the text – see, for example, his intervention in the Alleluya on f.
151 r, analysed above – makes it unlikely that he simply forgot to provide the flourished counterpoint
with a text. Performance experiments with modern singers specialized in late medieval repertories
also suggest that this flourished counterpoint does not represent idiomatic vocal performance.
Rather, the passage looks more typical of keyboard performance. Evidence that keyboard players
were able to deal with non-synoptically intabulated short passages is found in the Faenza Codex,
where a scribal accident on f. 79 v caused the tenor line to be placed after, rather than underneath,
the flourished counterpoint. See Memelsdorff, The Codex Faenza 117, pp. 58–59.

126 David Catalunya
Although the codex Faenza 117 – the most extensive keyboard source of the
period – does not transmit any Credo setting, 56 there is ample evidence that Credos
were often performed with the organ. The Florentine chronicler Filippo Villani
(c.1381) reports that „in our greater church the Credo [symbolum] was sung in part
with the organ and in part with the choir,“ and describes „the usual insertion of
the organ“ in the Credo as an „antique custom.“ 57 On the Iberian Peninsula, the
fourteenth-century Consueta or customary of Gerona Cathedral contains count-
less references to organ performance in the liturgy, where an extensive number
of chants – mostly sequences, hymns, Kyrie, Gloria, Credo and Benedicamus –
bear indistinctly the indications „pulsatur cum organo,“ „tangitur cum organo,“
„cantatur cum organo,“ „dicitur cum organo,“ or simply „cum organo.“ 58 An an-
notation of particular interest, appearing several times throughout the Gerona
Consueta, reads „Credo maior cum organo.“ 59 The Credo maior – also known as
Credo cardinalis – is a monophonic mensural composition very similar in style
to the Madrid Credo, which later became the Credo IV of the Liber Usualis. 60 A
fourteenth-century manuscript from a Franciscan church in Todi transmits an-
other, similar, mensural Credo – the Credo regis – prescribed to be performed with
the organ. 61 Here the organ-choir alternatim pattern is clarified with the marginal
56 The earliest known organ setting of a Credo is preserved in the Buxheim Organ Book. For a discus-
sion of the problems of an alternatim interpretation of this organ setting, see F. Mark Siebert, „Mass
Sections in the ‚Buxheim Organ Book‘: A Few Points,“ The Musical Quarterly 50/3 (1964): 353–366.
57 „Quorum primus [Bartholus], cum partim organo, partim modulatis per concentum vocibus in
nostra maiori ecclesia symbolum caneretur tam suavi dulcique sono artisque diligentia eumdem
intonuit, ut relicta consueta interpositione organi, cum magno concursu populi, naturalem seguen-
tis harmoniam, deinceps vivis vocibus caneretur, primusque omnium antiquam consuetudinem
chori virilis et organi aboleri coegit.“ Philippi Villani: Liber de civitatis Florentiae famosis civibus, ed.
Gustavo C. Galletti (Firenze: Mazzoni, 1847): 34; Philippi Villani: De origine civitatis Florentie et de
eiusdem famosis civibus, ed. Giuliano Tanturli (Padua: Editrice Antenore, 1997), 408 (XXV, 3).
58 Gerona, Arxiu de la Catedral, MS 9. Although all of these references to the organ were inserted
as marginal annotations in the first half of the fifteenth century, evidence of the liturgical use of
the organ in Gerona Cathedral dates back to 1368. On April 19 of that year, Raymundo Geronella,
a beneficiary of the cathedral, was granted an annual salary for playing the organ on certain feast
days: „pro organis certis diebus annis tangentibus in ecclesiae gerundensis,“ Arxiu de la Catedral
de Girona, Llibre de Calçada, f. 117 r. Document edited in Julio-Miguel García Llovera, De organo
vetero hispanico. Zur Frühgeschichte der Orgel in Spanien (St. Ottilien: EOS Verlag, 1987): 301. See
also Francisco Civil, „El órgano y los organistas de la Catedral de Gerona durante los siglos XIV–XVI,“
Anuario Musical 9 (1954): 217–250.
59 See, for example, f. 30 r (In die epiphanie) and elsewhere.
60 The Credo maior, or Credo cardinalis, is transmitted in an early fifteenth-century Proser-Troper
from Gerona (now preserved in Barcelona, Biblioteca de Catalunya, M911, ff. 155 v–157 r), where
it is followed by the same mensural copied in Madrid 1361 on ff. 177r–v. For more on the origins
and transmission of the Credo cardinalis, see Marco Gozzi, „I prototipi del canto fratto: Credo
regis e Credo cardinalis,“ in Cantus fractus italiano: un’antologia, ed. Marco Gozzi (Hildesheim:
Georg Olms Verlag, 2010): 138–154. See also Marco Gozzi, „Alle origini del canto fratto: il ‚Credo
Cardinalis‘,“ Musica e storia 14/2 (2006): 245–302. On the term „Credo maior,“ see Thomas Forrest
Kelly, Plainsong in the Age of Polyphony (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992): 183.
61 Todi, Biblioteca Comunale, MS 73, f. 6 v–8 r. Credo edited and analysed in Fabrizio Mastroianni, „Il
Credo regis di Todi,“ in Cantus fractus italiano, ed. Gozzi, pp. 155–164.

annotations „organum“ and „chorus;“ not coincidentally, the Amen bears the anno-
tation „organum.“ The performance of the Madrid Credo, as transmitted by Scribe β,
presumably involved an alternation between the choir (unornamented verses) and
a soloist (ornamented verses), while the flourished organ intervention was reserved
for the Amen. 62
The most striking feature of this seemingly instrumental setting lies in the
richness and variety of its rhythmic figurations. In barely one line, the counter-
point’s rhythmic flow passes through four different mensural proportions, three
of which involve subdivisions of the breve and the semibreve that go far beyond
the possibilities offered by the French, classical Ars nova theory. This complexity of
the counterpoint’s rhythmic notation is indeed characteristic of the so-called Ars
subtilior style.
Precisely because of this notational complexity, the contrapuntal relationship
between the textless fragment and the Credo’s Amen has been contested territory
in twentieth-century musicological literature. In 1962 Hanna Stäblein-Harder ex-
plicitly mentioned this fragment „with apparently no connection with the Amen,“ 63
an opinion that Gómez Muntané followed in 1987/1992 when she referred to the
„petit fragment vocal ou instrumental, dans tout cas sans texte, qui utilise des signes
de mensure.“ 64 In 1993 Karl Kügle commented very briefly on this Credo merely
to point out that the textless fragment was in fact „a discantus part in Ars subtilior
style for the Amen.“ 65 Yet in 1998/2009 Gómez Muntané attempted to rebut Kügle’s
hypothesis by arguing that there was no basis whatsoever for claiming a polyphonic
relationship between the textless fragment and the Credo’s Amen. 66 She accused
Kügle of forcing the polyphonic coordination by introducing four „emendations“
in his transcription, without which the polyphony could never work. If we remove
these emendations, insisted Gómez Muntané, „we must assume that [the Amen] is
62 We could even speculate whether the choir was accompanied in unison by a small organ in the un-
ornamented verses – instrumental accompaniment in unison with plainchant is fully documented
in later periods, see Juan Ruiz Jiménez, „Ministriles y extravagantes en la celebración religiosa,“
in Políticas y prácticas musicales en el mundo de Felipe II, ed. J. Griffith and J. S. Pajares (Madrid:
ICCMU, 2004): 199–239, at 211.
63 Hanna Stäblein-Harder, Fourteenth-Century Mass Music in France: Critical Text, Companion Volume
to CMM 29 (Musicological Studies and Documents 7, Rome: American Institute of Musicology,
1962): 170.
64 Gómez Muntané, „Autour du répertoire“ (Certaldo), p. 195.
65 Karl Kügle, „A fresh look at the liturgical settings in manuscript Ivrea, Bibl. Cap. 115,“ Revista de
Musicología 16/4 (1993): 2458–2459, at 2466. Kügle mistakenly refers to this piece as a Gloria.
66 Maricarmen Gómez Muntané, „Una fuente desatendida con repertorio sacro mensural de fines del
medioevo: el cantoral del Convento de la Concepción de Palma de Mallorca,“ Nassarre 14/2 (1998):
333–374, at 354–355, re-edited in Bolletí de la Societal Arqueològica Lul·liana 54 (1998): 45–64, and
in Borderlines Areas in Fourteenth and Fifteenth-Century Music, ed. K. Kügle and L. Welker (Münster
and Middleton: American Institute of Musicology, 2009): 63–94. Gómez Muntané insisted on the
same idea in her book La Música Medieval en España (Kassel: Edition Reichenberger, 2001): 251.

128 David Catalunya
monophonic, and that it is followed by a brief one-part fragment, vocal or perhaps

instrumental, which may or may not be related to the preceding Patrem.“ 67
A closer look at the counterpoint features of the proposed transcription in Ex-
ample 6, however, makes it clear that here we are not dealing with two melodies
merely superimposed at random. Obviously, the contrapuntal relationship be-
tween the textless fragment and the Credo’s Amen is anything but casual. Details
such as the play of appoggiaturas in a 3!5 motion at the beginning of the passage,
the repetition of the contrapuntal scheme 3. . .7-6-5!8 with two different rhythmic
surfaces in the central section, and the varied, well-balanced use of the basic con-
trapuntal intervals throughout the fragment reveal a highly sophisticated musical
sensibility. Even the final cadence’s parallel fifth seems characteristic of fourteen-
th-century organ performance. 68 How then to explain the notational issues that led
Gómez Muntané to question the fragment’s polyphonic viability?
In attempting to answer this question, the old controversy surrounding the text-
less fragment and how it relates to the Credo’s Amen will serve us as a pretext for
re-examining the passage’s notational features and uncovering further connections
with contemporaneous sources and repertoires.
Proportional signs
According to Gómez Muntané, Kügle introduced the following „emendations“

in his transcription: (1) he interpreted the numeral 4 as a proportio tripla instead of
quadrupla; (2) he kept the value of the breve constant in C and c, thus interpreting
C in proportion sesquialtera; 69 (3) he reduced by half the value of the long and the
semibreve that precede the final note; and (4) he removed the B-flat from the clef
in order to avoid a tritone.
Besides the obvious fact that the counterpoint line does not have any B-flat in
the clef as Gómez Muntané claimed – and, accordingly, there is no tritone to be
avoided –, her interpretation of the proportional and mensural signs merits further
discussion.
The diminution 4:1 that Gómez Muntané suggests is rather infrequent in late
medieval music as a proportion between equal figures. This rare proportion is occa-
sionally found in manuscript Torino J.II.9, where it is expressed with the sign 0, 70
67 „hay que suponer que [el Amen] es monódico y que tras el sigue un breve fragmento vocal o tal
vez instrumental a una voz, relacionado o no con el Patrem que le precede.“ Gómez Muntané, „Una
fuente desatendida“ (Nassarre), p. 355.
68 Robertsbridge and Faenza 117 offer many examples of parallel fifths. In Faenza 117, cadential par-
allels are especially frequent in the sacred repertoire (flourished counterpoints on chant melodies).
69 According to the classical Ars nova theory, a breve in C is two minims longer than in c. By keeping
the value of the breve constant, Kügle interprets the passage in C in proportion 3:2 (sesquialtera)
with respect to the fragment’s opening passage in c.
70 See, for example, Se de mon mal delivre prestement (Torino J.II.9, ff. 124 v–125). This source is edited
in The Cypriot-French Repertory of the Manuscript Torino, Biblioteca Nazionale, J.II.9, 4 vols., ed.
Richard Hoppin (CMM 21, Rome: American Institute of Musicology, 1960). For a facsimile repro-

and less frequently with the numeral 4. 71 In this source the most frequent meaning
of the numeral 4 is the proportion 4:3, 72 but it can also mean other proportions
such as 5:2. 73 The manuscripts Chantilly and Mod A, on the other hand, show a
much more consistent use of the numeral 4. In these two sources, when the piece’s
base mensuration is in major prolation, 4 very often means proportio dupla, 74 while
in a context of minor prolation it means proportio tripla. 75 Accordingly, there is no
obstacle to interpreting the numeral 4 in the Madrid textless fragment as a mutatio
qualitatis of the proportio tripla previously expressed by the numeral 3 – that is, now
organizing the minims into three groups of four, instead of four groups of three.
As for the interpretation of the mensural sign C with a proportional meaning
(in this case, sesquialtera proportion), the Ars subtilior repertory transmitted in
Chantilly and Mod A provides us with various examples in which mensural signs
acquire proportional meanings. 76 Hence, in the absence of an explanatory canon,
the meaning of proportional and mensural signs must necessarily be deduced from
the context in which they appear. In the Madrid textless fragment, the polyphonic
coordination of the passage in C is even clarified by means of a signum congruenti-
ae (transcribed in Example 6 as a fermata).
The scribal process
In the light of all of the foregoing, only one of the four „emendations“ that
Gómez Muntané attributed to Kügle stands: the reduction by half of the value of
the long and the semibreve that precede the final note. Yet the replacement of a
breve and a minim with a long and a semibreve, rather than a scribal error, looks
more like a choice. Emendating the rhythm of the tenor line would actually be the
most economical solution. Once again, the simplest explanation for this mensu-
ral accident lies in the combination of copying and composition processes. If the
duction of the manuscript, see Il Codice J.II.9. Torino, Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria, ed. K. Kügle
and I. Data (Lucca: LIM, 1999).
71 See Je prens d’amour noriture (Torino J.II.9, f. 154 r).
72 See, among others, Se de mon mal (Torino J.II.9, ff. 124 v–125 r); Celle en qui j’ai mise m’amour (Torino
J.II.9, f. 131 r); Sur toute fleur la rose est colourie (Torino J.II.9, f. 137 r).
73 See Puis que ame sui doulcement (Torino J.II.9, f. 107 r).
74 See, for example, Medee fu (Chantilly, f. 24 v): „Canon: ad figuram 3, in preporcione sesquialtera;
ad binaria in preporcione sesquitercia; ad quaternariam in proporcione dupla. . .“ See also L’orques
Arthus (Chantilly, f. 40 v).
75 See, for example, Ma douce amour, by Hasprois (Mod A, f. 28 r): „Canon: ad figuram ternariam [i.e.
3] in proporcione sexquialtera cantetur, ad binariam [in proporcione] dupla, ad quaternariam vero
[in proporcione] tripla cantetur.“ That is, 2 = 2:1; 3 = 3:2; 4 = 3:1. The numeral 3 can also represent
different proportions, such as 3:1, 3:2, or even 9:6. For example, in Se doulz espoir by Corradus de
Pistoia (Mod A, f. 31 v), the numeral 3 means 3:1; in Angelorum psalat by Rodericus (Chantilly, f.
48 v), it means proportion 3:2; in Belle, bonne, sage by Cordier (Chantilly, f. 11 v), it means 9:6.
76 To give just one example, in Johanes de Jauna’s Une dame requis (Mod A, f. 12 r, with base mensura-
tion c) the value of the breve remains constant even when the signs C, O and o mark changes of
mensuration.

130 David Catalunya
scribe invented the flourished counterpoint himself after having copied the Amen
melody as he saw it in his unornamented exemplar, only towards the end of the
extemporary composition process might he have realized that the musical gestures
he was creating demanded a longer final cadence. 77 From tempus 1 through 7 the
flourished counterpoint’s rhythmic flow accelerates gradually. Tempus 7 reaches
the speed climax, while the deceleration passage in C in tempus 8 serves to prepare
an elongated final cadence, thus creating a remarkable ritardando effect that coun-
teracts the intensive accelerando in tempora 1–7. 78 Thereafter, the scribe either
forgot to return to the tenor line in order to modify its rhythmic notation, 79 or,
more likely, considered it unnecessary to do so. 80
Here, like in the alternatim ornamented sections, evidence hints once again
at the scribe’s active role in the transformation of the piece. While the large-
scale structural parameters of the Credo’s new version were possibly present in
the scribe’s mind even before he begun copying the text, the melodic and contra-
puntal ornamental details seem to have materialized extemporaneously during the
writing process.
The spontaneous character of the scribe’s intervention, in turn, clearly indi-
cates his fluent familiarity with actual performance practice. More specifically, the
scribe’s profile seems to match that of a magister claustralis of Toledo Cathedral,
who taught the choirboys the art of canto de melodía and received an extra salary
for playing the organ; someone like Alfonso Fernández, who is documented as a
magister claustralis and an organist in 1384, or Juan González, who is documented
as having taught canto de órgano and canto de melodía in 1418 and 1425 (see above).
Indeed, such a rare written record of what were generally unwritten performance
77 A similar case, in which the composition of a flourished counterpoint on a liturgical tenor gave rise
to minor modifications in the tenor’s rhythm, is found in a fourteenth-century manuscript from
Tuscany. The manuscript contains, among others, a counterpoint treatise by Paolo da Firenze and
what looks like a counterpoint exercise on the melody of the Kyrie Cunctipotens by a user of the
theoretical manuscript. An erasure in the tenor line betrays a „ripensamento“ motivated by the „in-
tentio contrapuncti“ chosen by the scribe. Pedro Memelsdorff, „Siena 36 rivisitata: Paolo da Firenze,
Johannes Ciconia, e l’interrelazione di polifonia e trattatistica in fonti del primo Quattrocento,“
Acta Musicologica 76 (2004): 159–191, esp. 178.
78 Manuscript Torino J.II.9 contains the most extreme examples of this type of written agogics, in
which extensive passages of flourished counterpoint accelerate and decelerate with extraordinary
fluency. See for example Je prens d’amour noriture (Torino J.II.9, f. 154 r), The Cypriot-French Reper-
tory, ed. Hoppin, vol. IV: Virelais and Rondeaux (CMM 21/IV), p. 53.
79 To do so, it would have sufficed to erase and modify the shape of the two last notes of the ligature,
making them square instead of oblique.
80 Michael Scott Cuthbert has shown that this type of mensural disagreement in cadences is a common
phenomenon in cantus planus binatim settings: „That these notational errors are systematic at
penultimate notes of phrases suggests not scribal sloppiness but rather a practice of flexible rhythm
just prior to the cadence. Like final notes, which often do not agree in duration, the preceding notes
may have been held at the liberty of the singers.“ Cuthbert, Trecento Fragments, p. 383.

practices must have had a pedagogical purpose. 81 Perhaps the same ornamental
principles were also to be applied to the other mensural Credo, copied by Scribe
α on the preceding folio? – Curiously, these two mensural Credos share the same
Amen melody in Madrid 1361. 82
The unwritten background of the so-called Ars subtilior style
If the interpretation proposed here holds, this polyphonic setting offers us a

priceless glimpse into a cathedral cantor / organist’s contrapuntal skills in late four-
teenth-century Toledo. With this idea in mind, the passage’s unusual notational
complexity brings to the fore further questions about the relationship between
the so-called Ars subtilior style and the widespread practice of extemporizing
flourished counterpoints on liturgical tenors. If the Madrid witness reflects actual
performance practice, rather than an exercise in compositional engineering, 83 the
scribe’s use of complex notational devices appears aimed at capturing or emulating
the rhythmic flexibility of improvised counterpoint. This hypothesis is in line with
Anne Stone’s reflections on the role of ornamentation and performance practice in
shaping the development of the Ars subtilior rhythmic notation. 84 In her 1994 dis-
sertation, Stone analysed a polyphonic Credo by Zacara da Teramo, whose cantus
part is profusely ornamented in manuscript Mod A. 85 She notes that the Mod A
version of this Credo „contains a multitude of invented note shapes that function
clearly as ornamentation upon the simpler line transmitted in concordant sources,“
and considers that it could be „a record of a performance practice in which exten-
sive ornamentation of the cantus line takes place.“ 86 This, argued Stone, „suggests
that one possible context for the invention of note shapes in this period was the
attempt to record a practice of improvisation.“ 87
81 In any case, noticeable physical evidence of page turns (especially on the folio that contains this
Credo) indicates that the manuscript was actually used for rehearsing and perhaps even for perfor-
mance.
82 Even more curiously, in Scribe α’s version, the Amen’s penultimate note is a long, which matches
the counterpoint of Scribe β’s counterpoint.
83 In his influential handbook of music notation, Willi Apel transmitted the image of a cerebral and
mathematical Ars subtilior, rich in technical artifices but poor in spontaneity and expressivity: „It is
in this period that the musical notation far exceeds its natural limitations as a servant to music, but
rather becomes its master, a goal in itself and an arena for intellectual sophistries.“ This opinion
influenced other popular handbooks of music history, such as Richard Hoppin’s Medieval Music
(New York: Norton, 1978). Willi Apel, The Notation of Polyphonic Music, 900–1600 (Cambridge, Mas-
sachusetts: The Mediaeval Academy of America, 1942; reprint 1953), Chap. 9, „Mannered Notation,“
p. 403.
84 Stone, Writing Rhythm, see especially pp. 153–165. See also idem, „Glimpses of the unwritten tradi-
tion,“ and idem, „Che cosa c’è di più sottile riguardando l’Ars subtilior?,“ Rivista Italiana di Musicolo-
gia 31 (1996): 3–31.
85 Mod A, ff. 23 v–25 r. Edited in PMFC 13, no. 21.
86 Stone, Writing Rhythm, p. 153.
87 Ibid., p. 155.

132 David Catalunya
In the light of Zacara’s Credo, Stone examines the function of invented note
shapes in other Ars subtilior pieces, such as Jacob de Senlenches’ En attendant es-
perance, and concludes that, while the rhythmic surface of these pieces is extremely
complex, groups of invented note shapes „always take up the durational space of
a large note value, here usually the semibreve, and virtually always coincide with
the start of a semibreve in the tenor.“ 88 In other words: even in the most complex
masterpieces of mensural engineering, invented note shapes are used to express
flourished counterpoints with extraordinary rhythmic flexibility, a stylistic feature
that might have had some sort of background in unwritten performance practice.
Stone supports her hypothesis by quoting passages from various contempora-
neous theoretical treatises that hint at the idea that rhythmic complexity existed
in performance practice prior to the invention of a notational system capable of
expressing it in written form. One of the most striking assertions of the primacy of
the rhythmic idea over its notational expression comes in the famous Tractaus figu-
rarum, a fourteenth-century treatise that describes an intricate system of invented
note shapes aimed at expressing counterpoints with a different mensuration from
its tenor line. 89 The anonymous author explains the motivation that induced him
to compile the treatise: „because it would be very incongruous for that which can
be performed not to be able to be written.“ 90
In addition to Stone’s observations, it is worth noting here that some of the
organ pieces transmitted in the codex Faenza 117 make use of similar note shapes to
express ornamental figures like those found in the Mod A version of Zacara’s Credo.
Many Faenza pieces combine binary and ternary subdivisions at all levels below
the breve (semibreve, minim, semiminim and fusa) in order to produce smooth
changes of speed within a diversity of rhythmic figurations. In some of these pieces,
the complex rhythmic notation is clearly aimed at emulating flexible agogics, even
creating rubato – that is, accelerando/rallentando – effects. 91
The Madrid textless counterpoint, however, does not make use of invented note
shapes. Instead, it uses proportional signs. And even if the passage emulates a
practice of extemporized counterpoint, its scribe was very much at home in the
rhythmic notation of written compositions of the Ars subtilior repertory. This raises
further questions about the assimilation of the Ars subtilior style on the Iberian
Peninsula. While we have long known that Jacob de Senleches and other Ars subtil-
88 Stone, Writing Rhythm, pp. 157–165 (quotation from p. 163).

89 Edited and translated in Tractatus Figurarum. Treatise on Noteshapes, ed. Philip E. Schreur (Lincoln
and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1989). No fewer than fourteen copies of the treatise
survive, which may be indicative of the great interest in complex rhythmic notation that arose
among musicians and theorists of the time.
90 „Quia esset multum inconveniens quod illud quod potest pronuntiari non posset scribi et clare
ostendere tractatum hunc parvulum ordinare curavi.“ Tractatus figurarum, ed. Schreur, pp. 72–73.
Stone, Writing Rhythm, pp. 156–157.
91 See, for example, Elas mon cuor (II) and Biance flour in Keyboard Music, ed. Plamenac, nos. 14 and 24.
Faenza 117’s rhythmical variety is greater than can be expressed consistently by means note shapes.
Memelsdorff, The Codex Faenza 117, pp. 110–121 and 143–148.

ior composers spent some time in Castile, Navarre and Aragon, the lack of Iberian
sources transmitting this kind of repertory continues to puzzle modern scholars. 92
The Ars subtilior thus remains a truly elusive episode in Spanish music history. How
did Madrid 1361’s Scribe β get in contact with Ars subtilior notational technics?
What kind of manuscript sources was he familiar with?
Although no collection of Ars nova or Ars subtilior polyphony has been pre-
served in Toledo Cathedral, inventories and records of payments show that the
cathedral school owned manuscripts from which the choirboys learned the art of
mensural polyphony. We also know that the books recorded in the inventories and
administrative accounts represent only a portion of the manuscripts that were in
circulation at Toledo Cathedral. Each cathedral beneficiary with choir obligations
had to provide himself with the necessary liturgical books at his own expense. 93
This was probably also the case of singers and teachers specializing in polyphonic
music, who used to possess their own personal collections. 94 Only books for col-
lective use were directly commissioned by the cathedral, the orders being charged
to the Obra y Fábrica. 95 Toledo Cathedral has owned books of polyphonic music
since the first half of the fourteenth century or even earlier. 96 Unfortunately, many
92 Senleches appears to have served at the court of Leonor, queen of Castile, to whom he dedicated
the ballade Fuions de ci on the occasion of her death in 1382 (Chantilly, f. 17 r; Mod A, ff. 15 v–16 r;
and Reina, f. 61 v). In 1383, Senleches is documented as having spent some time in the royal house of
Navarra, from which he received a payment allowing him to return to the service of the Aragonese
cardinal Pedro de Luna (the future pope Benedict XIII), his new protector after the death of Queen
Leonor. Nonetheless, the work of Senlenches has survived solely in Italian and French manuscripts
(a total of six known sources). Higini Anglès, Historia de la música medieval en Navarra (Pamplona:
Aranzadi, 1970): 225.
93 On many occasions, personal books circulated from hand to hand without ever entering the in-
stitutional library. José Janini and Ramón Gonzálvez Ruiz, Manuscritos litúrgicos de la Catedral de
Toledo (Toledo: Diputación Provincial, 1977): 14–15. For a further exploration of the formation of
the cathedral library, see Gonzálvez Ruiz, Hombres y libros de Toledo (Madrid: Fundación Ramón
Areces, 1997). See also Gonzálvez Ruiz, „La Biblioteca Capitular de Toledo en el siglo XIV,“ Toletum
6 (1973): 29–56.
94 Andrew Wathey also points out that books of polyphony generally belonged to the singers who used
them, and not to the institutions where they were used. Andrew Wathey, „The production of books
of liturgical polyphony,“ in Book Production and Publishing in Britain, 1375–1475, ed. J. Griffiths and
D. A. Pearsall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989): 143–161, at 149–150.
95 The cathedral did not have an official scriptorium, but rather entrusted the production of books to
specialized workshops, monasteries, and individual clergymen, including cathedral cantors, mag-
istri, and other canons. For more on book production and trade in medieval Toledo, see Janini and
Gonzálvez Ruiz, Manuscritos litúrgicos de la Catedral de Toledo, pp. 11–20; Gonzálvez Ruiz, Hombres
y Libros; Gonzálvez Ruiz, „La Biblioteca Capitular;“ Reynaud, La polyphonie tolédane.
96 An inventory of Toledo Cathedral from the second quarter of the fourteenth century records a
„librete pequennuelo de canto de órgano“ (a little tiny book of polyphony), possibly a manuscript
in octavo format similar to thirteenth-century sources such as Madrid 20486. The same inventory
records another „libro de órgano pintado secundum mensuram et tempus,“ which might refer to a
miniated book of mensural polyphony. Yet the fact that a part of the sentence is in Latin, while the
rest of the inventory is all drafted in the vernacular Castilian, could also suggest that the Latin words
were excerpted from a title written on the first folio of the book (perhaps something like De organo
secundum mensura et tempus? Could this be an indication of a treatise on mensural music?). While

134 David Catalunya
Libros de Obra y Fábrica from the second half of the fourteenth century have been
lost. References to books of polyphony, however, re-appear in the early fifteenth
century. 97 The Libro de Obra y Fábrica of 1418 records payments for purchasing
and compiling at least two books of polyphony. That year, the racionero Alfonso
Martínez bought from a Franciscan monk „a book of mensural polyphony (canto de
órgano) . . . from which the choirboys learn the mensural polyphony in school;“ 98
likewise, the racionero Loys García was also paid for compiling another book of
mensural polyphony in five gatherings and a half. 99
The three-part Gloria copied into the additional bifolio attached to Madrid 1361
(see Example 3), might represent a reliable token of the kind of polyphonic reper-
tory transmitted by these lost books from Toledo Cathedral. Furthermore, surviving
fragments from more than fifteen different manuscripts of the late fourteenth and
early fifteenth centuries, now preserved in Valladolid, Madrid, Burgos, Barcelona,
Tarragona and elsewhere, bear witness of the common type of polyphonic reper-
tory that circulated in and among Iberian ecclesiastical institutions. 100 All those
palaeographical and codicological evidence points towards a dating of the inventory to the first
half of the fourteenth century, one of its records („Item una capa . . . que dio este nuestro sennor
el arçobispo Don Gil, siendo arcediano de Calatrava“) suggests that the document was drafted
between 1338 and 1350, the years in which Gil Álvarez de Albornoz was archbishop of Toledo. Higini
Anglès identified the „librete pequennuelo de canto de órgano“ with manuscript Madrid 20486 (La
música a Catalunya, p. 258, fn. 1); this hypothesis was convincingly rejected by Juan Carlos Asensio
in his El Códice de Madrid. Biblioteca Nacional, MS 20486. Polifonías del siglo XIII (Madrid: Editorial
Alpuerto, 1997): 14–19. The inventory is now preserved in Madrid, Bilioteca Nacional, MS 7217/2.
Edited in Luis Pérez de Guzmán, „Un inventario del siglo XIV de la Catedral de Toledo (La Biblia de
San Luis),“ Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia 89 (1926): 373–419, references to polyphonic
books at pp. 388 and 402.
97 See Michael Noone, „The Copying and Acquisition of Polyphony at Toledo Cathedral 1418–1542:
The Evidence from Inventories and Payment Documents,“ forthcoming. I thank Michael Noone for
sharing a draft of his work prior to its publication.
98 OF 761, 18 May 1418: „a Frey Johan, frayle profeso de la orden de Sant Francisco, quatro florines de
oro del cuño de Aragón que ovo de aver por razón de un libro de canto de órgano que dél compró,
puntado, para por donde aprendan los moços cleriçones el canto de órgano en la escuela.“ Noone,
„The Copying,“ doc. 1; Reynaud, La polyphonie tolédane, p. 348.
99 OF 761, 8 October 1418: „quatroçientos mrs. que ovo de aver por su trabajo de raer un libro de canto
de órgano de la dicha eglesia de cinco quadernos e medio de cantos viejos que tenia e los punto
e escrivió de solempnes cantos de órgano onrrosos.“ Noone, „The Copying,“ doc. 2. According to
Noone, the payment is for the labour of scraping clean an old book, which suggests palimpsest.
Document also cited in Reynaud, La polyphonie tolédane, pp. 348 and 360.
100 The Valladolid fragment transmits Zacara’s unornamented version of the Credo cited above and
three other Ars nova Credos, see Jesús Martín Galán, „Una nueva fuente para el estudio del Ars
nova en Castilla,“ Revista de Musicología 20/1 (1997): 77–102. For the Madrid and Burgos fragments,
see François Reynaud, „Les sections de messe d’un fragment de tropaire espagnol inconnu,“ in Les
sources en Musicologie (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1981): 87–106, and José
López-Calo, „El motete de Gormaz-Burgos. Una nueva aportación al Ars nova en España,“ Revista
de Musicología 9 (1986): 545–556. For the Catalan fragments, see David Catalunya, „Polyphonic
Music of the Fourteenth Century in Aragon,“ in Disiecta Membra Musicae, ed. G. Varelli (Berlin:
De Gruyter, 2020), pp. 117–163 (Open Access at degruyter.com). For a new fragment in Portugal, see
Manuel Pedro Ferreira, Antologia de Música em Portugal na Idade Média e no Renascimento, 2 vols.
(Lisboa: Cesem, 2008): I, pp. 49–50, Figure 6 and Plates XIII–XIV.

witnesses show that the notational devices found in the Madrid textless counter-
point were generally absent from Iberian collections of sacred polyphony.
More likely, Madrid 1361’s Scribe β also had contact with the kind of secular
compositions transmitted in the Chantilly Codex. He made use of proportional
signs suspiciously similar in meaning and function to those found in pieces like the
anonymous ballade Medee fu (Chantilly, f. 24 v), 101 where the numeral 4 appears in
brief passages of flourished counterpoint with rhythmic figurations similar to those
in Madrid 1361 (see Figure 6 and Example 7).
A possible contact of organists and cantors of Toledo Cathedral with secular,
courtly polyphony appears tenuously reflected in administrative records. For ex-
ample, Ruy González, a racionero (prebendary canon) of the Dean’s choir of Toledo
Cathedral, is recorded in 1355 as an organist „of the queen,“ 102 and we might sup-
pose that a similar pattern of connections between the cathedral choir and the
royal court persisted through the late fourteenth century. Furthermore, some Ars
subtilior composers also served at papal Avignon, with which Toledo Cathedral was
in direct contact. 103
We might even speculate whether secular polyphony was performed instrumen-
tally on the organ at Toledo Cathedral, as often occurred in Italian cathedrals and
churches and surely in many other places. 104 In Il Saporetto, Simone Prodenzani
(c.1415) describes a fictional organ performance that takes place during a Vespers
service for Christmas Eve; after the Magnificat and the final Benedicamus, the
organ continues performing pieces of secular music, as was actually customary in
contemporaneous Florentine churches. 105 Prodenzani highlights that „no stampi-
ta was heard there, but rather the usual ecclesiastical music.“ Among the organ
pieces he deemed appropriate for this liturgical context is Senleches’ La harpe de
melodie, whose two-part version indeed works perfectly on the keyboard. La harpe
de melodie has a rhythmically simple tenor line, over which a flourished cantus part
plays with rubato-like ornamental figurations. 106 Two-part arrangements of other
Ars subtilior pieces such as Medee fu, which makes use of proportional numerals,
would work equally well on the keyboard.
101 Includes the subscription „Canon: ad figuram . . . quaternariam in proporcione dupla“ (Chantilly, f.
24 v). Edited in PMFC 18, no. 26, and Stoessel, The Captive Scribe, II, pp. 49–52.
102 „capellán de la Reina, tocador de los órganos“ (might refer to Maria of Portugal, mother of King
Peter I of Castile). Barbieri, Biografías, p. 422; Reynaud, La polyphonie tolédane, p. 154.
103 See Plumley, „An ‚Episode in the South‘?,“ and Yolanda Plumley and Anne Stone, Codex Chantilly,
Bibliothèque du Chaâteau de Chantilly Ms. 564. Introduction [to the facsimile edition] (Thurnhout:
Brepols, 2008): 134.
104 See Richard Robinson, „The Faenza Codex: The Case for Solo Organ Revisited,“ The Journal of
Musicology 34/4 (2017): 610–646.
105 In fact, the archbishop of Florence Antonino Pierozzi (1389–1459) condemned the widespread
custom of performing ballatas and other kinds of secular music on the organ. For both Pierozzi’s and
Prodenzani’s references and further bibliography, see Robinson, „The Faenza Codex,“ pp. 612–616.
106 See Stoessel’s revision of La harpe’s copy in Chantilly in his The Captive Scribe, I, p. 54–57, and II,
no. 42, pp. 193–195.

136 David Catalunya
Only a few decades after Prodenzani’s literary recreation, Teodoro da Monte-

feltro wrote a letter describing an actual organ performance by Bianca de’ Medici
before Pope Pius II. Here the writer highlights the rhythmical aspects of her playing:
Poi le menò in salla et fece sonare la dita Biancha de organi, la qualle sona benissimo cum
bonissimi ponti he porporcione he misura avantazata.
(Then he took them into a hall and had the organ played by Bianca, who plays very well with fine
phrases and proportions and sophisticated rhythm. 107)
Although we do not know what kind of mensural proportions and sophisticated

rhythms she performed, this testimony reminds us once again of the role of in-
strumental performance in the development of a taste for complex rhythms in
polyphonic music.
Not coincidentally, various well-known Ars subtilior composers were themselves
instrumentalists, which implies that, besides mastering the most complex nota-
tional technics, they were also immersed in a musical world of basically unwritten
performance practice. Barlotomeo da Bologna was an organist, Senleches was a
harpist, and even a singer like Matteo da Perugia, who composed both secular
and sacred polyphony, taught improvised counterpoint (biscanto) at Milan Cathe-
dral, where he worked in close collaboration with the organist Monti da Prato. 108
Madrid 1361 adds one more piece of evidence to this historical puzzle. Scribe β
fits the profile of a music teacher and organist of Toledo Cathedral, a magister
claustralis who dealt with mensural and non-mensural chant, simple and com-
plex polyphony, melodic and contrapuntal ornamentation, vocal and instrumental
performance. The version of the Credo he notated into Madrid 1361 must indeed
have had a pedagogical purpose. His seemingly spontaneous contrapuntal orna-
mentation of the Credo’s Amen thus affords another small glimpse into the vast
sea of unwritten performance practice from which the Ars subtilior phenomenon
emerged in the late fourteenth century.
107 Prizer translates „misura avantazata“ as „impressive rhythm.“ William F. Prizer, „Games of Venus:
Secular Vocal Music in the Late Quattrocento and Early Cinquecento,“ The Journal of Musicology 9/1
(1991): 3–56.
108 Claudio Sartori, „Matteo da Perugia e Bertrand Feragut i due primi Maestri di Cappella del Duomo
di Milano,“ Acta Musicologica 28/1 (1956): 12–27.

Figure 1a: Madrid 1361, Scribe β’s Credo on f. 178r–v

138 David Catalunya
Figure 1b: Madrid 1361, Scribe β’s Credo continued (f. 178 v)

Example 1: Madrid 1361, Scribe β’s Credo on f. 178r–v, comparison with Ivrea 115’s
version (beginning)

140 David Catalunya
Figure 2: Madrid 1361, Scribe α’s Credo on f. 177 r–v (beginning)
Example 2: Madrid 1361, Scribe β’s intervention on Scribe α’s Credo, f. 177r–v
(beginning)
Figure 3: Madrid 1361, Scribe β’s Iuste iudex on f. 196 v

Example 3: Madrid 1361, Scribe β’s Iuste iudex on f. 196 v (beginning)
Figure 4: Madrid 1361, Scribe β’s intervention on f. 151 r
Example 4: Madrid 1361, Gloria on ff. 189 v–199 r (beginning)

142 David Catalunya
Figure 5: Graphic density
Example 5: Romero de Ávila’s example of canto de melodía (1774)

Example 6: Madrid 1361, Credo’s Amen on f. 178 v
Figure 6: Medee fu from Chantilly (f. 24 v), beginning of the

upper voice’s B section
Example 7: Medee fu, excerpt as edited in PMFC 18 (no. 26)


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Kirchenmusikalisches

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Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek

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Wissenschaftlicher Satz: satz&sonders GmbH, Dülmen

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Jörg Bölling und Ulrike Wick-Alda

Die Autorinnen und Autoren der Beiträge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145

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essentially unwritten nature of instrumental performance practice in this period,

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Organists and music teachers at Toledo Cathedral

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– Pedro González (between 1354 and 1411) 11

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In solemn processions, rather than accompanying or alternating with chant, the

24 ACT, SC, lib. 2, f. 16 v [f. vi v].

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If organ performance at Toledo Cathedral had reached a level of virtuosity com-

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Manuscript Madrid 1361 and its Scribe β

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Furthermore, Scribe β reveals himself as a ‚user‘ of the liturgical corpus of the

The Credo on f. 178 – arte de melodía

The monophonic mensural Credo that Scribe β copied on f. 178r–v is known

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Table 1: Alternatim structure of the Credo in Madrid 1361, f. 178r–v

verse style notation

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in an early sixteenth-century treatise entitled Arte de melodía sobre canto lano y

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cantu Gregoriano,“ and provides an example of this elusive, unwritten performance

The Credo’s Amen – Subtilitas in organ performance?

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monophonic, and that it is followed by a brief one-part fragment, vocal or perhaps

According to Gómez Muntané, Kügle introduced the following „emendations“

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The scribal process

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The unwritten background of the so-called Ars subtilior style

If the interpretation proposed here holds, this polyphonic setting offers us a

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88 Stone, Writing Rhythm, pp. 157–165 (quotation from p. 163).

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Only a few decades after Prodenzani’s literary recreation, Teodoro da Monte-

Although we do not know what kind of mensural proportions and sophisticated

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Figure 1a: Madrid 1361, Scribe β’s Credo on f. 178r–v

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Figure 2: Madrid 1361, Scribe α’s Credo on f. 177 r–v (beginning)

Figure 3: Madrid 1361, Scribe β’s Iuste iudex on f. 196 v

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